Daniel Price - Slick

Nestled between two pieces of card stock was a single sheet of inkjet paper. Printed on the paper was a slightly pixelated photo of a handsome young black man who by now was easy to recognize. From an ornate living room, he innocuously smiled with some pretty little cupcake. Her head had been circled in red marker.

It wasn’t until Andy shook the envelope that a slip of paper the size of a bookmark fluttered down to his desk. The typeface was big and bold.

Andy. This woman’s name is Harmony Prince. She’s about to become very important. If you hurry, maybe you’ll get to her first. Good luck.

It was the opinion of more than one person that Andy and I were cloned from the same German DNA. We were both six and a half feet tall, quietly brainy, emotionally distant, and annoyingly pragmatic. Unlike me, Andy was a journalist with the Associated Press. Unlike Miranda, Andy had no pretense of a higher purpose. He knew he was being fed by someone with an agenda, most likely nefarious. He didn’t care. If it had to do with Hunta, it was worth looking into.

On the back of the slip were two phone numbers: one for Jay McMahon, the other for Sheila Yorn. I figured at least one of them would be willing to tell Andy all about this mystery woman. Of course, neither would admit to sending the envelope, since they hadn’t. Nor would they explain why Harmony Prince was about to become very important, since they couldn’t. Like everyone else, they’d have to read about it in the paper. Even Andy. In truth, he wasn’t meant to get to Harmony first. But if he played his cards right, he’d have her whole dramatic backstory ready, right when the Bitch demanded it.

________________

“My main function,” I told Madison, “is to influence the news. Their main function is to catch the collective eye of a demographically desirable audience and hold it there long enough to show them the advertisements. The only way to support my function is to support their function. And the only way to do that is to understand how they operate.”

She sat next to me on the couch, taking copious notes. I grabbed her notebook and chucked it.

“Hey.”

“Don’t write,” I said. “Just watch. What do you see on TV?”

“The local news.”

“What are they covering?”

“I don’t know. You keep talking over them.”

I muted the television. “Don’t listen. Just watch. What do you see?”

“A photo of that guy from Melrose. What’s his name? The Bitch Fiend.”

“Bryan Edison,” I said.

“Right. Him.”

“And who are they showing now?” I asked.

“Annabelle Shane. I’m so sick of hearing about her. Did you know at my school—”

“Whoa, whoa. Wait. Shut up. Did you notice any difference between the way they were just shown?”

Madison gently grimaced. “Uh, I guess not.”

“When they flashed that picture of Bryan, it was an extreme close up. Enough to see the pores on his nose. He wasn’t smiling. And there was some weird darkness around the edges, making him look even more sinister. With Annabelle, it was just the opposite. The shot they used of her was bright and smiley and a little bit blurry, giving her this distant and angelic quality. And if you think that’s a fluke, wait and watch.”

I flipped to another local newscast. Within seconds, images of Bryan and Annabelle were presented again. Different photos. Same motif.

“You see?”

She saw. “Jesus.”

“Yup. It used to be old-school journalists who produced and edited the news. Now they’ve all been replaced by these Gen-X vid kids. They work cheap, they work fast, and they know all the great film-school techniques to spice up the drama.”

Madison took the remote out of my hand and did her own surfing. “Damn. I can’t believe I never noticed this before.”

“It’s almost impossible to catch on your own, especially with the sound on.”

“Huh. That’s probably why my mom never watches TV.”

I thought about it. “Oh yeah. That’s right. I guess she would see stuff like this all the time. That’s kind of cool.”

“My mother’s the polar opposite of cool. Wait! There it is again! Holy shit! Does everyone do this?”

“Everyone who wants to stay in business.”

“But why does it work?”

I shrugged. “If I knew that, I’d be in advertising.”

“Come on.”

“It’s human nature. We like a good distraction. The more extreme, the better. Not only that, but most of us are so overwhelmed by the complexities of modern life that we’re secretly relieved when the newscasts squeeze reality into a familiar storytelling construct. Don’t just give us information. Tell us a tale. Who’s the victim? Who’s the villain? How does it end? What’s the moral? Of course if it’s presented too dramatically, we can’t accept it as reality anymore and we turn away. That’s why they have to be subtle. It’s really not easy to please us.”

From her end of the couch, Madison beamed me a goofy smile. “What?”

“Will you be my daddy?”

“Shut up.”

She went back to the TV, which now gave us a five-second music video clip of a do-ragged Hunta at his most sexually menacing. Even I got scared of him.

“Wow,” she said. “I caught that one. You know, it’s kind of funny that the news is the only place you can see or hear ‘Bitch Fiend’ now. It’s like contraband everywhere else.”

“I’ve never heard the song.”

“It’s lame. It’s just Hunta strutting around, bragging about his big dick and all the different women he’s bagged. It only got popular because it has a good beat and the video shows lots of skin. I can’t believe it would corrupt or inspire anybody.”

“That’s the debate,” I said.

“What do you think?”

“I think the press is going to screw Hunta into the ground.”

“So if you were his publicist, what would you do?”

“If I were his publicist,” I replied, “I’d start screwing back.”

________________

On Tuesday, we made some noise.

As the sun set over the Pacific, Gail Steiner speed-walked the perimeter of the Griffith Park Observatory. She had returned to her beat at the Los Angeles Times last week, after eight months of maternity leave. Nobody could picture this rocket of a woman doing the domestic thing. She’d probably spent the whole time buzzing furiously around the house, scorching the walls with her afterburn. Well, now it was her husband’s turn to be the latchkey parent. She was back out in the open, doing what she loved.

Eventually, she pegged her new contact. It was hard to miss him. Rocket-of-a-Woman, meet Tank-of-a-Man.

“Calvin?” she asked.

He paused before answering. “Yup.”

“Hi. I’m Gail. It’s great to meet you. How you holding up?”

“Could be better.”

“I know. Listen, like I said on the phone, you have nothing to worry about. I’ll go to jail before I give up your name. You’re totally safe with me. Okay?”

That was essentially what I had told him, but Big Bank was more afraid of the rumors. If any of his comrades caught him leaking to the press, his reputation would be ruined. I had assured him the odds of that happening were as slim as he wasn’t.

“And by the way,” she lied, “you’re doing a good thing by talking to me.”

“Doesn’t feel that way.”

“I know. It’s never easy. But if Hunta’s doing something wrong—”

“Not something,” he corrected. “Someone.”

Surely, Gail was beginning to realize the jackpot she had won. Too bad I couldn’t take credit for it. I would have had a chit with her the size of Ohio.

“Calvin,” she said, slowly reaching into her purse or jacket, “I just want you to know before we even begin that I’m going to be recording this. Nobody’s going to hear this tape but me. I promise. Is that okay?”